My Life as a Shooter: Planning the Practical Purchases (Rifles)

It's been a while since I did a post about firearms, so here you go: a post about what Nutnfancy calls "a philosophy of use".

While I've posted previously about other rifles, handguns, etc. that I want that's more to satisfy curiousities and desires for collecting or use in sporting capacities. This? This is about practicality.

It's a pain in the ass to have to stock a wide variety of ammunition for practical purposes. You want to keep the array of calibers down to as few as possible, ideally being just one. (Practically, two: one for rifles/handguns and one for shotguns; pistol-caliber carbines are still a thing for a reason, ever since the 19th century had revolvers and lever-action/pump-action rifles sharing such.) Stocking three (shotgun, handgun, rifle) is reasonable, not counting rimfire.

To this end, I've done some comparisons of commonly-available cartridges. For my purposes, the choice has to (a) be a solid deer hunting cartridge in a soft point load, (b) have proven success in self-defense/military applications, and (c) have proven platforms for both uses that are readily available and are not difficult to maintain on my own (i.e. keep trips to the gunsmith to a minimum).

At this time, the cartridge choice is the 7.62x39mm cartridge used in the SKS, the AK-47, the Czech vz. 58, and the CZ 527 Carbine. Of those rifles, it's the sporting one--the bolt-action CZ 527 Carbine--that I want to acquire first. It's been one of my choices for making into a Scout Rifle, and before I get into the more tactical end of things I would like that Good Enough Rifle that Colonel Jeff Cooper talked about decades ago. (Don't tell me about the specs; I know them, and I have my reasons for going this route.)

The SKS will likely come next. They're not that hard to find where I live, and go for less than any of the AK variants. This is the Ranch Rifle part, meant to be someplace static and used for walking the property or handing off to an unarmed ally. The 10 round magazine with a fixed internal magazine isn't a problem when you can more-or-less stay put and have a short train to your ammo box. It can be used effectively for either the hunting role that the CZ is meant to do, or the fighting role of the AK, but isn't best suited to either.

The AK is the fighting rifle, and even if the ban on full-auto gets lifted in the near future I would prefer a semi-auto only AK. I expect to get this last, barring a sale on a desirable model, because the costs for decent--not top-end, but just competent ones--have gone up a lot over the last few years. However, magazines are not hard to find or unduly expensive and the ammunition isn't out of line or hard to acquire where I am. The real expense, therefore, would come from training with it. I would like to see the fuckwittery Obama did to Russian arms imports lifted so we can get those Saigas back into the country and down at the $500 price they once commanded.

There you have it: a bolt-action hunting rifle, a semi-auto general-purpose rifle, and a semi-auto fighting rifle all using the same cartridge. It's not a new plan, or a radical plan, or an innovative plan. It's a practical plan, because it's proven to work and be effective at the desired goal: having one rifle cartridge across three platforms that can get the job done.